Why Haven’t Some Arab Countries Condemned Haniyeh Assassination?

This silence was eerie enough to indicate that the interests of normalization with Tel Aviv are more important to these Arab countries than the Palestinian cause. A Palestinian news website reported that the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Mauritania have not condemned this assassination. 

In recent years, these countries have taken the path of normalization with the Israeli regime against the wishes of the public opinion and hoped to find a place for themselves in the region through friendship with the occupiers.

 The interesting thing is that the UAE and Bahrain rulers who were the forerunners of the normalization in the Persian Gulf claimed that their thaw with Tel Aviv served an aim to support the Palestinian nation, a claim made to assuage the regional public backlash. 

In addition to reopening the embassy of the Israeli regime, the UAE and Bahrain signed security agreements with this regime, paving the way for boost of bilateral cooperation. But on October 7, Hamas shattered all the plans of normalization. The normalization-based UAE and Bahrain strategy was frustrated after Operation Al-Aqsa Storm and intensification of anti-Israeli sentiments in the Arab world, and in practice the goals these countries followed behind normalization were not realized.

Before Hamas operation, Saudi Arabia was also drifting towards normalization, and there was a possibility of signing an agreement between the two sides with the mediation of the US, and other Arab countries in the region were also looking to complete this project and their plans to form a regional alliance with Israel, mainly an anti-resistance one. Actually, everything was ready for the compromising rulers to realize their agenda of friendship with the occupation, but the Gaza war destroyed all their plans.

The UAE had counted on Israel's aid to strengthen its geopolitical position, but now that the international community is standing by the Palestinian nation due to the Israeli crimes in Gaza, they cannot continue the path of normalization. 

Therefore, with the normalization project put on shaky ground after Hamas attack, Arab rules went angry with this resistance movement as they failed to reach the goals for which they had laid rails, and they blamed Hamas leaders for their failure. Now, due to the disastrous situation in Gaza, the conditions in the region are such that no Arab country dares to talk about the normalization of relations with Tel Aviv, and the rulers of the UAE, who see their dreams busted, consider Hamas the reason for the failure of their plans. 

Hoping for victory of Israel

The rulers of UAE and Bahrain, who saw themselves in a fait accompli and there was nothing they could do and their plans had failed politically, set their hopes on the security aspect of the war in Gaza.

They expected Israel to occupy Gaza and obliterate Hamas to remove a major obstacle to normalization, but this project failed to meet its end. 

Now, despite the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of troops and being equipped with state-of-the-art Western weapons, the Israeli army is desperate against the resistance groups and is unable to get out of the crisis it made. 

The defeat of the Israeli regime in the region will turn all the equations on their head in favor of the resistance groups, and the plans that the conciliatory Arab rulers had invested on will be marred.

Another point lying in the decline of some Arab countries to condemn the assassination is that Hamas has Muslim Brotherhood DNA and this issue is considered a threat to the UAE and Bahrain.

In 2014, the UAE labeled the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization and cracked down on its branches and leaders. Therefore, Hamas was indirectly included in the list of terrorist groups by the UAE, and therefore, from the point of view of Abu Dhabi rulers, the assassination of Hamas leaders by Tel Aviv does not need to be condemned.

Rising costs for Arabs 

The UAE and Bahrain, intoxicated by the normalization agreement, also called Abraham's Agreements, wanted to be at the forefront of the new security order in the region and thereby gain special political and economic benefits, but the war in Gaza put additional costs on the shoulders of these countries.

The compromising rulers sought an anti-Iranian regional coalition in association with Israel to curb Iran's deepening influence in the region. But now the Islamic Republic has gained further popularity among the regional nations for its massive support to Gaza and launching the punitive Operation True Promise against Israel in mid-April. Actually, Iran and the Axis of Resistance—a regional bloc including Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen— have dealt such a blow to the Israelis that the pro-normalization Arabs were totally sidelined from the political and security equations of the region.

The fact that the Westerners send messages to Iran every day to convince the resistance groups to de-escalate and not to take action against the occupied territories is a sign of Iran's upper hand in West Asia that foils all the efforts of the Israeli-Arab-Western front to put the Axis of Resistance in a tight spot. Therefore, some Arabs, who wanted to cut off Iran's hand and its powerful arms in the region, after the Gaza war, have to live with an Iran that is far more powerful than before and that has paid a high price to undermine its rival.

The UAE, which in recent years dreamed of Arab world leadership, thought that with Israeli assistance it could increase its regional weight to influence the Palestinian conflict, but now it is seen a betrayer of the Palestinian cause. 

In an arrogant move, the UAE described Hamas' operation of October as a crime and even some sources announced that this country is helping this regime by sending fighter jets to Israel to help bomb Palestinians in Gaza.

Also, in association with Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the UAE launched a land bridge delivering goods from the Persian Gulf ports to the Israeli regime as Yemen continues to impose its Red Sea ban on Tel Aviv in solidarity with Gaza. 

The Arab compromisers think that by supporting the Israeli crimes in Gaza and pushing for Tel Aviv victory over the resistance groups the region will provide their security interests, but the fact is that it is the Israeli leaders that are playing with fire and escalating the tensions in the region and Arab alliance with the Israelis is a Lose-Lose game since Arab rulers will both lose their legitimacy among their public and face doubled security challenges if the crisis inflames and war spreads across the region.